Hi all,

I am using the old Tamiya T-62A together with the resin turrent and some add on from SP design to try to build a T-62M 1983... Trying to clear my stash before before Trumpeter release their T-62 series in June/July 09...from what I heard so far....

I have help from those who has seen the real vehicle or those who knows answers to the following questions

1) Is the T-62 fuel line in the rear of the vehicle the same setup as T-55.

2) For the second picture, I followed the instruction to assemble the lights in the front. However, I thought it looks a little too high; my thoughts is that lights on military vehicle are usally lower for safety or tatical reasons.

i) Should I lower the 2 lights?

ii) Should there be some kind of "safety cage" around the lights ?

Sorry for the funny name, I do not know what to call it...Tamiya does provide one but is too big to fit into this resin. The resin add-on that comes with it does not provide this "safety cage"

iii) Is it normal for operator to remove the "
"safely cage" in actual combat operation?

iv) Anyone scratch build this cage before and can you share it?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Mike (aka Mikado)

Hi there Mike. Had a quick look at my references. Your placement of the lights are correct. Right next to the splash guard. And yes, the lights do get a brush guard.
Cheers!

Here are some answers:

1) Yes, the fuel lines must have the same setup as T-55.

2)Yes, the lights have a guard, I don't think it can be removed in combat operation because it is welded to the hull. I think you may lower the lights a little. I don't know if anyone tried this before, but here you have a picture:



It is not so difficult, just use 0.6-0.7 mm wire bent to shape. I made those guards for a T-55 and a T-62, but those were commision builds and I don't save any record from commision builds.

Hope this helps. Best regards.

José.

*EDIT* Jacques is right, the light cage would not be removed unless the lights were destroyed too. Look carefully, actually, the lights are attached to the cage itself, not to the hull, If you want to remove the cage, then you should remove the lights as well.

Yes, the lights are too high.





No, the light cage would not be removed unless the lights were destroyed too. Also, the cage in the Tamiya T-62 kit is wrong. The cage in the 1/35 Tamiya T-55 is correct and could be used for a pattern.

Hi Jacques, Jose and Christian,

Thanks for your feedback. To fix the front lights for the T-62, I decided to cannibalize the light guard from my Tamiya T-55 since I could not get the cage right after 1 hour of bending the wire....

Jose, after looking at your reference photo, I realized the driver position of the old tamiya kit seems to be wrong... the additional armor or ERA attached to the turret overlaps to driver hatch...

errr... I am starting to think that the dimension of the kit in general is incorrect...afterall this kit has been around for a long time. When the trumpeter kit is available, hope I can do a comparsion.

Eitherway, I am just excited that I managed to fully assemble 1 kit after a long while...Will be priming, painting it for the next few weekends...

Good to see it ready for paint. Looking forward to seeing it done.

Good work sofar!

Are you keeping the rubber tracks?

Jurjen, most likely I will keep the track...don;t know any AM tracks for T-62 or if they are the same as T-55....and even if the T-55 tracks does fit, i need to keep it for my Tamiya T-55 converson to IDF tiran 5 that I am going to build once I received my Legend tiran 5 conversion set

I have convinced myself to go ahead and put some paint on it ....It's been a while since I last took out my air-brush...I get excited simply thinking about it hee...hee...

T-62 tracks are the same as T-55 tracks, but the T-62 has a longer run.

Also, refits of the T-62's in the 1990's on have T-72 tracks installed. The only problem is that they use a "hybrid" sprocket that is neither T-62 nor T-72 and there is no correct option available in 1/35.

I would recomend replacing the Tamiya kit tracks as they really are poor. (Compare them to the T-55 tracks you have.)

Jacques, if I'm right, there should be one correct set made by WWII productions from Australia. According to some sources, the point with this set is that the sprockets coming with the RMSh tracks don't fit with the links ! Can't remember which is too large, sprocket or links.
Anyway, I guess I'll order one set to check myself ! Another option should be to wait for Trumpeter to release their T-62.

Olivier

Jacques, You are right...after comparing the T-55 track, the T-62 tracks does look very soft in detail. But I need to keep my T-55 track for my future to be built IDF Tiran 5. I took out my old trumpeter T-55 track hoping I can use those but they look even worse than the T-62 track that I have now.

Olivier, thanks for the pointer to the WWII resin tracks...I checked the website that found out these tracks cost ~AUS$40. This is way beyond my means.

I guess I will keep the T-62 track for now; Maybe later, I will check with my LHS to see if I can order the T-55 track from Tamiya seperately if it is not to costly.

Anyway, something interesting happens after I primed the turret, many small holes started to appear after the primer dries. These small holes were actually not visible to the naked eyes before priming.

Luckily, with the help of Mr Surfacer, I was able to cover up most of the small holes with 2 or 3 light layer. There are some holes that I missed out that I will cover up later...

The good things that comes out of these small holes is that Mr surfacer actually added some texture to the turret although I am not sure if the texturing is too excessive...

Picture below shows some of the holes that I missed out last night....

Yes, i see them too. They come from the older formula the resin manufacturer was using. They recently changed their formula slightly, and Sergej has changed his casting proceedure a bit, so that pin-holes are minimized. However, all resin kits have pinholes in them, even nicely pressure cast kits like Hobby Fan.

Not an excuse though...I have kept pressuring Sergej to keep working on his castings and I think it has made his work better.

Good luck with the MR. Surfacer and the surface texture looks good.

Here is another update after 2 week of work...
Had the base coat done and put the decal in for some imaginary unit...

Just learnt from a friend over the weekend that the additional armour on the T-62 turrent is know as horse shoe armour...not ERA...it's suppose to be the precursor to ERA or something like that...

This resin turret with base coat done is starting to look mean....
So far, I am enjoying the build....Gonna start weathering soon ....

And yes...I am waiting patiently for the Trumpeter T-62 as well...

Good work sofar Mike!

Looking forward to some weathering!